Description: This film is about a British airplane squadron during the First World War.

Benefits of the Movie: "The Dawn Patrol" shows aerial warfare in its infancy:
the rickety planes, the dog fights, the poor training given to
the British pilots, and the pressure on the officers who sent boys
up every day knowing that many wouldn't come back.

Possible Problems: MODERATE. As one ten-year-old kept repeating
as he watched this movie, "These guys drink like fish." Niven
and Fairbanks also have too much of a high old time between
flights. While some men resort to drunkenness and pranks in the
face of tension and likely death, this film overdoes it.
The heroes also miraculously survive time and again,
although reality takes hold at the end.

QUICK DISCUSSION QUESTION: In this movie, the commanders repeatedly send the squadron on missions that infuriate the pilots because they seem impossible or excessively dangerous. Sometimes the commanders make stupid mistakes. But even when the commanders are giving good orders, what about their perspective is different from the viewpoint of the flyers?

Helpful Background:

World War I was the first war in which the airplane played a
combat role. Planes were used both for scouting enemy
positions and for bombing and strafing. Observation balloons
and dirigibles were also used. Early in the war, German
dirigibles bombed Paris and London, but dirigibles were too
vulnerable and the Germans switched to planes. By 1915, the
airplane dominated the air war. The Germans had air
superiority from October 1915 until July 1916. After that,
the Allies, chiefly the British, dominated. When the U.S.
entered the war Allied air supremacy became overwhelming.
U.S. Army Air Corps strength went from three squadrons in
April 1918 to 45 in November of the same year. By the end
of the war there were 200,000 Americans active in the Army
Air Corps in Europe.

World War I aerial warfare featured a number of aces, men
who shot down many enemy planes. They were the American
Eddie Rickenbacker, the Frenchmen Georges Guynemey and
Charles Nungesser; Albert Ball of Great Britain, the
Canadian William Avery Bishop and the German Baron Manfred
Von Richthofen (the Red Baron).

Before World War I, balloons were used to observe enemy
positions. Propeller driven planes were first used to
observe enemy troops by the Italians in the Italo-Turkish
War of 1911-12. The British established the Royal Flying
Corps in 1912. At the beginning of World War I, the Allies
and the Germans each had about 200 slow, vulnerable planes.
These were soon replaced by faster planes. Early aerial
combat was hampered by the fact that bullets from the machine gun
mounted on the plane would strike the propeller. This was solved by
Anthony Fokker, a Dutch air craft designer working with the
Germans. The Allies quickly matched this advance.

From 1916 until shortly before the end of the war, the
Germans bombed Paris and London causing 9000 casualties.
Their main purpose was to draw British planes from the
front, to handicap British industry and to destroy morale of
the civilian population. The raids accomplished little of
military value.

Suggested Response: One element in the definition of a good commander is one who doesn't send his troops or planes out on an impossible mission just for his own glory if it succeeds. However, there is a difference in perspective between the flyers and the commanders. The commanders see the big picture that the flyers do not know. Thus, often, flyers will think that their missions are not justified, but might have a different perspective if they had the information available to the commanders.

(Be honest; Don't deceive, cheat or steal; Be reliable -- do what you say you'll do; Have the courage to do the right thing; Build a good reputation; Be loyal -- stand by your family, friends and country)

1. Did these particular men have to be flyers and put their lives at special risk? There were hundreds of other jobs that they could take which supported the war effort but which were less dangerous.

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